To Endure Academy Awards Show, You Have To Seize The Moments

You need a brave heart, babe, to make it from one of the end of the Oscars to the other.

You have to approach it with sense and sensibility. You have to pick your moments.

And if you're a veteran Oscar viewer, you know how to pick 'em.

You look for the big laugh. The big cry. The worst dress. The most embarrassing moment. Anything to get you through the night, to keep that dead-man- walking feeling at bay.

Monday's 68th annual Academy Awards show on ABC had its share of moments. Not spectacular moments. But moments of moments.

Like the . . .

MOMENT YOU REALIZED IT WAS GOING TO BE A LONG SHOW: The first -- when a star- struck Oprah Winfrey acted as if she'd never handled a microphone or asked a question before in public. (Was that mike on, Oprah? Was that mike on?)

MOST TOGETHER MOMENT: Clap your hands and stomp your feet for Stomp, a group of performers who kicked the Oscars into gear with the evening's most rousing and original performance.

MOST WASTED MOMENT: That remarkably unappealing, lifeless strut-fest of uber-models. An event that led Whoopi to wonder how supermodels who make 10 grand an hour can still look so, uh, upset.

MOST MOMENTS BETWEEN MOMENTS: The broad middle of the show. You know. From 9:30 to about midnight.

MOMENT WE MOST WISHED WE HAD GONE TO BED: It was somewhere in the middle.

MOST MOMENTS ON CAMERA FROM THE AUDIENCE: From where we sat, Mel Gibson.

MOMENT TO MAKE OSCAR PROUD: A stroke-weakened Kirk Douglas accepting his Lifetime Achievement Award, and Hollywood and his family standing in tribute.

OSCAR NIGHT MOMENT TO MAKE YOU SCREAM: It happened before the Oscars. Did you watch the Barbara Walters special and see our favorite Oscar-night hostess bump and grind with ``Striptease'' star Demi Moore?

MOST OVEREXPOSED MOMENT: Sharon Stone's thinly veiled breasts were beamed to how many countries?

MOST OVER-THE-TOP MOMENT: Among presenters, there's no doubt it was Stone and the evening's executive producer Quincy Jones, who were clearly turned on by their joint presentation. Give Stone points, though, for suggesting a psychic reading when she realized she was without one of those famous envelopes containing the name of the winner of the original- dramatic-score award.

MOMENT THAT GAVE US CHILLS: The moving montage of the film stars on and off screen who have moved on.

MOMENT WE THOUGHT WE WERE ALL WAITING FOR: The best-picture award in a year where nobody really cared.